Recently there has been some movement in Albany related to two bills in the New York State Assembly and senate. The Mental Health Alternatives to Solitary Confinement (MHASC), a coalition of more than 60 organizations, advocates and mental health professionals, has been working to end the practice of confining prisoners with psychiatric disabilities in solitary confinement, officially known as Special Housing Units (SHU's).

According to a fact sheet on www.boottheshu.org/SHUfactsheet.htm, the Department of Correctional Services houses nearly 5,000 prisoners in solitary confinement, which is 8 percent of the total inmate population and by their own estimate, 23 percent of these inmates are mental health consumers. There is no upper limit to the amount of time a person can be sentenced to solitary confinement. This site further reported that on an independent monitoring trip conducted by the Correctional Association of New York, that there was an inmate at Wende Correctional Facility who had been sentenced to an astounding 35 years in solitary confinement.

When a person is sentenced to solitary confinement they spend 23 to 24 hours a day in a barren concrete cell.

According to the MHASC Web site, there is insufficient care for the mentally ill who are serving prison terms. MHASC sites the following statistics that it received from the Department of Corrections:

€ The Central New York Psychiatric Center is the only psychiatric hospital in the prison system, and it has space for only 210 inmate-patients. Its capacity has not increased since it opened in 1980 even though the prisoner population has tripled over that time.

€ Gov. Pataki's proposed addition of 177 treatment beds is insufficient for the 1,000 inmates with mental illness currently in disciplinary segregation.

In the New York State Assembly, A3926 was introduced by Assemblyman Jeffrion L. Aubry and on March 27, it was voted on and passed by the assembly. Our local assembly members, Gary Finch, Brian Kolb and Robert Oaks, all voted for its passage. We thank them for their support on this important topic. In the New York Senate, S2207-B was introduced by Sen. Michael Nozzolio, one of our senators who has been a supporter of people with disabilities. We also want to thank him for his leadership on this issue.

These bills would both make it illegal to place people with psychiatric disabilities in SHU and would create alternative therapeutic housing areas for people with a serious mental illness.

At this time, the senate's bill is stuck in the Senate Finance Committee. Last week, advocates from across the state called Majority Leader Bruno and Sen. Owen Johnson, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, to get the bill on the Finance Committee's agenda so that it could go up for a vote. We'll keep you posted of its activity.

Thought for the day

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

- Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, April 16, 1963

Amanda Derby is the

housing advocate for Options for Independence, located at 75 Genesee St. in Auburn. She can be reached at Options at 255-3447